Chinook, Killer Whales and Salmon Management

Two interesting things came my way this week: a video presentation by Alan Trites, scientist and Brian Riddell, CEO of the Pacific Salmon Foundation; and the Sport Fishing Advisory Board information for a meeting with DFO. The latter is a PDF which you can get from Bob Gallagher, Port Renfrew.

You should go and watch the video presentation. It is just shy of an hour, but very illuminating on the killer whale/chinook/noise/fishing issues. See my site for the link. It is at the top, so easy to find: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/10/lets-take-global-look-at-srkw-problem.html. The post I have inserted it into contains a long list of other factors affecting the Killer Whale/Chinook story (SRKW).

My cut to the chase summary is:

Killer whale numbers are dealt with right at the beginning. The stats show that the population has increased and decreased four times since 1960, one trough was only 66 animals, with the highest peak only 98 animals. That being the case, what is the legitimate number of animals that the species needs to avoid extinction? Based on these figures, 100 may be a good goal, but that is simply my guess.

Overall, the speakers say that the scientific facts do not support the public discussion and newspaper/press articles which mostly say: eliminate sport fishing for chinook and eliminate tanker noise, to save the whales from extinction. Afterall, the peaks and troughs in whale numbers occurred when there was commercial/sport fishing at up to 70% of the returning fish.

Sport fishing is dealt with in minutes 19 to 23. They say that time and area closures are the answer, not a blanket closure. The inside water catch rate is far lower than it used to be in terms of % of runs taken and 600,000 chinook come back on average now. The two Fraser stocks of most influence are the Harrison and Thompson rivers and their numbers have declined. Their migration pattern in inside waters is very well defined in terms of a time window and stopping fishing for large fish in windows makes more sense.

They go on to say that it is a big problem that chinook are coming back smaller than they used to, and this is a broader ecosystem issue that needs to be looked into. However, the SRKW program by the feds, at minute 30, has $61M funding, but only $3M is allocated to research, and it is a competition so only a few programs get funding when much more money should be spent on science. 

Surprisingly, the SRKW are here only 2.5 months per year, and roam from southern California. Their feeding and biological stability needs to be looked at in a much broader range, given that they are not here for most of the year. You will probably know that the big California rivers for chinook are the Klamath and Sacramento. But these have had precipitous decline in numbers, and climate change, along with competition for water from farming, are big issues. The Columbia has its sequential dam problems, with the five on the Snake being argued over as to their removal.

Apparently, noise is not really a problem. Putting more ferry runs on busy weekends/holidays increases noise more than tankers which are quite slow. Do we want to slow ferries down? I’m not so sure, but the speakers note that new ocean-going vessels are far better at being silent than older boats. And, of course, our much smaller boats have much smaller, to non-existent noise.

That makes sense to me. On several occasions I have had, when not expecting it, a killer whale pass through my downrigger and fishing line spread, looking up at me without touching anything, but giving me a heart attack. I have been in schools of pinks catching fish, and they weren’t scared even though several pods of killer whales were moving through on all sides, several dozen. No doubt other anglers have experienced the same.

And the other thing everyone knows is that chinook fishing goes dead when killer whales pass through, and it does not resume for several hours. The standard practice is to move upstream of their direction, aiming to be as much as four hours in front because killer whales scare the fish in front of them. Presumably this is echo-location and the fish feel it or hear the calls whales make.

Moving on to the SFAB text, I tried to put the PDF on this site, but it was not importable. If you are not plugged in to the SFAB process, do get involved, even if it is only to get local agendas and minutes. You will be much better informed. And get the mailouts by the Sport Fishing Institute, too.

“The Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, officially announced the release of the Wild Salmon Policy 2018 – 2022 Implementation Plan and the final Cohen Response 2018 Status Update, as part of an integrated strategy to protect and rebuild wild salmon in BC.”

I can’t help but being a little uneasy with this. Afterall, in 2013, with no response from DFO on the Cohen Commission 1,000-page tome and 75 recommendations, the Auditor General asked me to do an Environmental Petition on the issue. I asked the then minister Gail Shea for the disaggregated actual spending for each and the actual full time equivalents (means number of staff) assigned to each recommendation. See: http://commonsensecanadian.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Cohen-Commission-Petition-Document-DFO-Oct.-2013.pdf. 

Here is my actual question;

Petition questions and/or requests:

Dear DFO Minister Gail Shea:

1.   It is one year since the $26.4 Million Cohen Commission on Decline of Fraser River Sockeye delivered its report to DFO. One year later, I would like to know: What concrete results , and detail them individually, with associated timelines and funding that DFO has committed or expensed to resolve each of the 75 environmental recommendations in the three volume Cohen Report on the Decline of Fraser River Sockeye: http://www.cohencommission.ca/en/FinalReport/. The recommendations are pages 105 – 115, of Volume 3. I am speaking of the boldfaced recommendations and the concrete results DFO has taken to achieve each of the 75 recommendations that can also be found in a Cohen PDF of Chapter 2, Volume Three.

The response was generic mush, the kind I used to write when I worked for government. You can read it here if you wish: http://commonsensecanadian.ca/fisheries-ministers-weak-response-cohen-commission-petition/. 

So I have reservations when DFO says all Cohen recommendations work is complete and we are on to the Wild Salmon Policy, which after all, has been around for decades without any work done on it.

The SFAB text goes on to say: “The Wild Salmon Policy 2018-2022 Implementation Plan is a five-year plan that outlines 48 concrete activities and 9 overarching approaches that Pacific Region will undertake towards maintaining and restoring Pacific salmon populations and their habitats. These activities are clustered under three overarching themes: Assessment, Maintaining and Rebuilding Stocks, and Accountability, and it is recognized that while DFO has a leadership role to play, the overall success in advancing the WSP will require ongoing and enhanced collaboration going forward with partners including other levels of government, First Nations and stakeholders.

The Minister also announced the release of the third and final Cohen Response 2018 Status Update. With the publication of this document, the formal reporting on the Department’s actions on the 75 recommendations of Justice Cohen’s 2012 Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River is complete. However, much of this work will continue and many of the key elements will continue to be tracked and reported on through other processes, including the new five-year WSP implementation plan. 

Both documents can be found on the new DFO salmon homepage: http://dfo-mpo.gc.ca/campaign-campagne/pacific-salmon-saumon-pacifique/index-eng.html." 

I am not holding my breath and will end here. You can look at the documents if you wish.